Here's another word that I see people use, just in written form, usually in comments in blogs: methinks.
Now what is up with that? "Methinks that he should have a different policy." Why not say "I think"? Is it so difficult to do that, or do people want to sound clever? I can see a dude type out "methinks," then stroke his scraggly beard, like, "That was a good one. Let's see what they think of *that*," and then chuckle to himself before he downs another Pepsi.
Like "behooves", methinks comes from Old and Middle English, and it shows up in Hamlet:
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."
Well, that's fine for Shakespeare, but come on, do people really have to resort to his language when they're telling someone they're wrong in a flame war?
2 comments:
Oh come on. Certainly nobody uses "methinks" outside of humor or some allusion to a play or monty python bit.
If anybody uses "methinks" when trying to be taken seriously, they need to put the tights back on because their break is over at the renaissance faire.
You haven't seen it in blogs? Some folks will use it when offering a comment on some serious issue. They're being clever, but it's silly. But really, I'm not upset about it, but it's just something I've noticed.
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